Brewer vetoes birther bill, guns bill

Calling it “a bridge too far,” Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on Monday vetoed the state legislature’s controversial “birther bill” and also rejected a bill that would have permitted guns on college campuses.

The Republican governor said the birther bill would have created “significant new problems while failing to do anything constructive for Arizona” and that she had no choice but to nix the legislation, which would have required presidential candidates to provide their birth certificates or other documentation proving that they were born in the United States.

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In a letter explaining her veto to the House speaker, Brewer said she could not support legislation that “could lead to arbitrary or politically motivated decisions” about candidates’ eligibility for the presidential race, since Arizona’s secretary of state would be the single person to ultimately decide whether a hopeful’s documentation met the state’s standards.

“I never imagined being presented with a bill that could require candidates for president of the greatest and most powerful nation on earth to submit their ‘early baptismal or circumcision certificates’ among other records to the Arizona secretary of state,” she said in the letter. “This is a bridge too far.”

Brewer elaborated in a Monday night interview on Fox News, saying the bill was “something that I felt very, very uncomfortable with and I feel that it serves no purpose.”

The bill, she said, “is a distraction, and we just simply need to get on with the state’s business.”

Republican state Rep. Carl Seel, the bill’s lead sponsor, has insisted that the legislation was not aimed at President Barack Obama and questions about whether he truly was born in the United States but, rather, about maintaining the integrity of the U.S Constitution. On Monday, he called the veto “unfortunate,” and said an override by the legislature could be “a real difficult monster,” The Arizona Republic reported.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) wrote Tuesday on Twitter that he was “proud” of Brewer for vetoing the bill. “[I]t was the right decision,” he wrote. McCain’s office told POLITICO it had no plans to comment further on the veto.

Brewer also vetoed a bill Monday that would have permitted students and others to carry guns on college campuses. The bill would have initially allowed guns to be brought into classrooms, but was revised to limit gun possession to sidewalks and roads on campuses.

Brewer told Fox News that while she is usually a supporter of pro-gun legislation, she vetoed the bill because it “was just very poorly and sloppily written and it just was not defined in the manner of which people could interpret it or could it be enforced.”